Facebook’s GraphQL moved to a new GraphQL Foundation, backed by The Linux Foundation

On Tuesday, The Linux Foundation announced that Facebook’s GraphQL project has been moved to a newly-established GraphQL Foundation, which will be hosted by the non-profit Linux Foundation. This foundation will be dedicated to enable widespread adoption and help accelerate the development of GraphQL and the surrounding ecosystem.

GraphQL was developed by Facebook in 2012 and was later open-sourced in 2015. It has been adopted by many companies in production including Airbnb, Atlassian, Audi, CNBC, GitHub, Major League Soccer, Netflix, Shopify, The New York Times, Twitter, Pinterest, and Yelp.

Why GraphhQL Foundation has been created?

The foundation will provide a neutral home for the community to collaborate and encourage more participation and contribution. The community will be able to spread responsibilities and costs for infrastructure which will help in increasing the overall investment. This neutral governance will also ensure equal treatment in the community.

The co-creator of GraphQL, Lee Byron said:

“As one of GraphQL’s co-creators, I’ve been amazed and proud to see it grow in adoption since its open sourcing. Through the formation of the GraphQL Foundation, I hope to see GraphQL become industry standard by encouraging contributions from a broader group and creating a shared investment in vendor-neutral events, documentation, tools, and support.”

The foundation will also provide more resources for the GraphQL community which will benefit all contributors. It will help in organizing events and working groups, formalizing governance structures, providing marketing support to the project, and handling IP and other legal issues as they arise.

The Executive Director of The Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin believes that this new foundation will ensure the long-term support for GraphQL:

“We are thrilled to welcome the GraphQL Foundation into the Linux Foundation. This advancement is important because it allows for long-term support and accelerated growth of this essential and groundbreaking technology that is changing the approach to API design for cloud-connected applications in any language.”

In the next few months, The Linux Foundation with Facebook and the GraphQL community will be finalizing the founding members of the GraphQL Foundation.